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Quotes About Self-discovery

I Have Decided I have decided to find myself a home in the mountains, somewhere high up where one learns to live peacefully in the cold and the silence. It's said that in such a place certain revelations may be discovered. That what the spirit reaches for may be eventually felt, if not exactly understood. Slowly, no doubt. I'm not talking about a vacation. Of course at the same time I mean to stay exactly where I am. Are you following me?
~ Mary Oliver
Now that I'm free to be myself, who am I?
~ Mary Oliver
And who do you think you are sauntering along five feet up in the air, the ocean a blue fire around your ankles, the sun on your face on your shoulders its golden mouth whispering (so it seems) you! you! you!
~ Mary Oliver
I am, myself, three selves at least. To begin with, there is the child I was. Certainly I am not that child anymore! Yet, distantly, or sometimes not so distantly, I can hear that child's voice—I can feel its hope, or its distress. It has not vanished. Powerful, egotistical, insinuating—its presence rises, in memory, or from the steamy river of dreams. It is not gone, not by a long shot. It is with me in the present hour. It will be with me in the grave.
~ Mary Oliver
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
~ Mary Oliver
How shall I go on, with my introspective and ambitious life?
~ Mary Oliver
Try to find the right place for yourself. If you can't find it, at least dream of it.
~ Mary Oliver
I did not come into this world to be comforted. I came, like red bird, to sing. But I'm not red bird, with his head-mop of flame and the red triangle of his mouth full of tongue and whistles, but a woman whose love has vanished, who thinks now, too much, of roots and the dark places where everything is simply holding on.
~ Mary Oliver
I am, myself, three selves at least. To begin with, there is the child I was. Certainly I am not that child anymore! Yet, distantly, or sometimes not so distantly, I can hear that child's voice—I can feel its hope, or its distress. It has not vanished. Powerful, egotistical, insinuating—its presence rises, in memory, or from the steamy river of dreams. It is not gone, not by a long shot. It is with me in the present hour. It will be with me in the grave.
~ Mary Oliver
and there was a new voice, which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do — determined to save the only life you could save.
~ Mary Oliver
there was a new voice, which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do— determined to save the only life you could save.
~ Mary Oliver
I am so vast, uncertain and strange
~ Mary Oliver
I don't want to be demure or respectable. I was that way, asleep, for years. That way, you forget too many important things.
~ Mary Oliver
I did not come into this world to be comforted. I came, like a red bird, to sing. But I'm not a red bird, with his head mop of flame and the red triangle of his mouth full of tongue and whistles, but a woman whose love has vanished, who thinks now, too much, of roots and the dark places where everything is simply holding on.
~ Mary Oliver
Let me always be who I am, and then some.
~ Mary Oliver
I was a poet, but I was away for a while from the loom of thought and formal language; I was playing. I was whimsical, absorbed, happy. Let me always be who I am, and then some.
~ Mary Oliver
If you're John Muir you want trees to live among. If you're Emily, a garden will do. Try to find the right place for yourself.
~ Mary Oliver
In the beginning, I was so young and such a stranger to myself, I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it, hear it, and react to it before I knew it all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.
~ Mary Oliver
It is the internal force - this intimate interrupter - whose tracks I would follow. the world sheds, in the energetic way of an open and communal place, its many greetings, as a world should. What quarrel can there be with that? But that the self can interrupt the self - and does - is a darker and more curious matter.
~ Mary Oliver
I'm not the river that powerful presence. And I'm not the black oak tree which is patience personified. And I'm not redbird who is a brief life hearted enjoyed. Nor am I mud nor rock nor sand which is holding everything together. No, I am none of these things. Not yet.
~ Mary Oliver
Try to find the right place for yourself. If you can't find it, at least dream of it.
~ Mary Oliver
But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice, which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do — determined to save the only life you could save.
~ Mary Oliver
How is it that we find Christina Aguilera more interesting than the inside of our own bodies?
~ Mary Roach
You know, up until later on today, I never really knew how to drink.
~ Mary Robison